GEOPOLITICAL IMAGINATIONS ABOUT THE EUROPEAN UNION IN RECENT POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS

Michael Schott

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 2007, vol. 98, issue 2, 284-295

Abstract: With the end of the Cold War the concepts of the geopolitical order of Europe have changed. Within this process the European Union plays a significant role. When the Iron Curtain came down, negotiations about the potential enlargement to the East started and the EU positioned itself differently regarding worldwide conflicts and wars. The influence of the new geopolitical situation on national long‐term orientations and changes in the representations of the national representatives is the focal point of this paper. It analyses the current discourses on Europe, the European Union and its global role based on selected interviews with high ranking politicians. The main issues are: how far does Europe extend and which part of Europe will form the EU? And which internal power relations will the EU develop in the future. A discourse analysis shows how the current problems are verbalised within the geopolitical representations and how they affect the political arena. In this paper the word discourse is used to describe a social process which can be called ‘inclination of sense’ or, in a more sophisticated manner, ‘genesis of meaning’. This meaning refers to (a) the processual character of political, social and territorial organisation, (b) its reflection in the mass media and its construction of what can be called ‘European’ or ‘familiar with Europe’ and (c) the influence of the semantic order on political decisions, which impose a specific structural order and social organisation.

Date: 2007
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9663.2007.00398.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:tvecsg:v:98:y:2007:i:2:p:284-295

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0040-747X

Access Statistics for this article

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie is currently edited by Jan van Weesep

More articles in Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie from Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().